The flood of information reaching drivers—telematics, infotainment, collision warning and others—requires a new approach to the operator-vehicle interface. At present, information (such as navigation instructions, cell phone and email messages, traffic warnings, infotainment options, vehicle condition monitoring, etc.) is presented to the vehicle operator asynchronously taking no account of how demanding the driving task might be in a given moment. For example, a “check engine” indicator light might light up among the instruments at the same time a driver is putting a CD into the stereo system, while the navigation system screen displays an upcoming turn and gives a verbal description of that turn, as a cell phone call comes into the car and the driver is engaged in conversation with one or more passengers.
Human beings have a finite ability to perceive the environment, to attend to elements of the environment, to cognitively process the stimuli taken in, to draw appropriate meaning from perceptions, and to act appropriately upon those perceived meanings. Furthermore, there is great variation within the driving population in both native and developed abilities to drive. Thus, vehicle operators are subject to confusion, distraction, and to ignorance, which is exacerbated by the barrage of stimuli they are now subjected to while operating a vehicle. Training, experience, and technology can be used to mitigate confusion, distraction, and ignorance. Unfortunately, in the United States there is little formal or informal training in the skills involved in driving, beyond the period when people first apply for their licenses. Driver training programs have not proven to be particularly effective, nor is training continued through the driving career. In fact, in the United States, in particular, most people think of driving as a right rather than a privilege. Further, studies show that most think of themselves as good drivers and of “the other person” as the one who creates problems. Unless and until a cultural or legal change takes place that encourages drivers to wish to improve their driving skill, it seems that technological solutions designed to minimize confusion, distraction, and ignorance have the best potential for improving the safety of the highway transportation system, which system is likely to become more crowded and, with little or no expansion of the roadway infrastructure likely to occur, therefore, also more dangerous in the future.
To address these and other safety concerns, an integrated safety system based on a state transition model has been proposed. The underlying concept is a “hierarchy of threat” model that steps through a series of states each one representing an assessment of the danger of an impending collision based on information from external object detectors and in-vehicle sensors. The states are “normal driving state,” “warning state,” “collision avoidable state,” “collision unavoidable state,” “post-collision state.” Sensor and data fusion algorithms combine information from the sensors and determine the degree to which the danger of collision exists. If the system detects the danger of a collision it issues warnings to the driver or, in some situations, takes control of the vehicle and initiates automatic braking, automatic lane change, or other forms of vehicle control. This system represents an attempt to bring previously unrelated sensor information into an integrated state from which useful inference about the danger of collision may be made and warnings to the driver, or actual control of the vehicle, can be used to avoid completely or mitigate the damage from a collision.
There has also been proposed a system that provides extensive monitoring of the vehicle and traffic situation in order to prioritize presentation of information to the driver. The goal of this system is to manage the stream of information to the driver while taking account of the driving task, conditions, and the physical, perceptual and cognitive capacities of the driver. The support provided is designed to improve the driver's focus and to re-focus the attention of a distracted driver as s/he undertakes navigation, maneuvering and control of the vehicle. The overall system architecture incorporates an analyst/planner that accepts inputs from sensors, includes a stored repertoire of driving situations, and records information about the driver. Additionally, the system includes a dialogue controller for managing communication with the driver. The system also monitors the driver and integrates the driver's condition into the decisions made by the warning and control systems.
None of the existing systems undertake the monitoring of a range of sensor data, nor do they provide for evaluation of the driver's cognitive load. Such systems additionally fail to consider the driver's activity in the cockpit that is not directly related to the driving task such as opening and closing windows, tuning the radio, etc. For example, existing systems either do not monitor the driver at all, or monitor the driver relative to static “model” behavior as opposed to actual dynamic driver performance and/or habits. Thus, these systems do not provide information in synchronization with the driving task, nor do they attempt to minimize distractions and/or to redirect a distracted driver's attention to critical events.
Additionally, previous systems that have attempted to assess driver performance have been limited to lane-following capability, that is, evaluating how well the driver maintains the position of the vehicle relative to the edges of the lane in order to generate a parameter representing the driver's lane-following ability. The parameter is periodically determined, and if it falls below an established level, a warning, such as a buzzer or visual indication, is presented to the driver. This system is limited in that it only provides lane-following evaluation and does not account for deliberate lane departures such as to avoid a hazard, is not integrated to receive a spectrum of sensor input, and does not include driver condition and driver activity data. Though such a measure will identify degraded vehicle control, it is questionable whether it will identify cognitive or mental distraction.
Furthermore, none of these systems provide feedback to the driver relative to their overall performance, nor do they provide feedback relative to improving driver performance.
Thus, there is a need to provide information to the vehicle operator in synchronization with the driving task so as to improve operator focus, minimize distractions and ensure the operator's ability to assimilate and use the information. There is a further need to re-direct a distracted operator's attention from non-mission critical activities to prioritized information and/or tasks necessary to maintain safe operation of the vehicle. There is an additional need to provide feedback to the vehicle operator relating to performance and to provide additional feedback designed to assist the operator in improving performance.